Brandon Zylstra wants to make a difference

[Sir Purr]

"Brandon had a different perspective," Moten said. "I will say, my brother and I have talked about this, we never necessarily felt unsafe there. But we knew things weren't the same for us as everyone else in town."


Moten recalls subtle things in high school, signals he picked up that others might not have since the same standards didn't apply. Moten credits his mom for keeping him on the high road, along with the simple struggle of being a single mom trying to raise a family.


"The difference in Brandon's perspective and mine could be as small as someone saying, 'He speaks so articulately,'" Moten said. "For him, that would never raise a red flag. But there are a number of things I remember like that. I'd go home and talk to mom about it since we were basically the only Black family in town. She always told us to rise above it, to come out stronger.


"Now looking back at it, it's unfortunate how some things were handled. Being an athlete, winning championships for the school, everything looks happy. But people on the outside don't realize what it was really like, or pick up on the things that were said and done by students or teachers or police officers that were intimidating."


Zylstra freely admits his blind spot now.


"When we were growing up, I didn't see it as a big deal," he said. "Somebody would call Jayme a name or something, and he'd just laugh it off and it never seemed like a big deal to him. I was probably in my 20s before I realized that racism was still a thing."


Zylstra would go off to college, working his way through Augustana University in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn. Hardly the kinds of melting pots which change your perspective on the world. Even when he graduated and was playing professional football in Canada, the realities others face didn't register, until he saw it through the eyes of teammates.


Zylstra recalled standing at a bus stop in Edmonton with Black teammates Bryant Mitchell and Darius Morris. People stared. Words were said. Zylstra described a "minor altercation," but the conversations with Mitchell and Morris that ensued changed him.


"I was like, 'Dang, is that what's it's like out here for you?' and they were like, 'Yeah, every day,'" Zylstra recalled. "I had no idea. Was I in a bubble? Absolutely. I'd call my Black friends and just admit I didn't know it was like that, and hear their thoughts, and I wanted to apologize, at least be one guy, because I didn't realize it was as bad as it was."


Several of those conversations were with Moten, who saw his friend transform, as both of their perceptions of home were being changed at the same time. It was impossible to think the same way about Minnesota Nice when you realized it wasn't nice for Floyd, or for Daunte Wright.